“Where are you going to?” he inquired with a voice of the last time of asking, and halted resolutely.

Richard now broke his silence to reply, “Anywhere.”

“Anywhere!” Ripton took up the moody word.  “But ain’t you awfully hungry?” he gasped vehemently, in a way that showed the total emptiness of his stomach.

“No,” was Richard’s brief response.

“Not hungry!” Ripton’s amazement lent him increased vehemence.  “Why, you haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast!  Not hungry?  I declare I’m starving.  I feel such a gnawing I could eat dry bread and cheese!”

Richard sneered:  not for reasons that would have actuated a similar demonstration of the philosopher.

“Come,” cried Ripton, “at all events, tell us where you’re going to stop.”

Richard faced about to make a querulous retort.  The injured and hapless visage that met his eye disarmed him.  The lad’s nose, though not exactly of the dreaded hue, was really becoming discoloured.  To upbraid him would be cruel.  Richard lifted his head, surveyed the position, and exclaiming “Here!” dropped down on a withered bank, leaving Ripton to contemplate him as a puzzle whose every new move was a worse perplexity.

CHAPTER III

Among boys there are laws of honour and chivalrous codes, not written or formally taught, but intuitively understood by all, and invariably acted upon by the loyal and the true.  The race is not nearly civilized, we must remember.  Thus, not to follow your leader whithersoever he may think proper to lead; to back out of an expedition because the end of it frowns dubious, and the present fruit of it is discomfort; to quit a comrade on the road, and return home without him:  these are tricks which no boy of spirit would be guilty of, let him come to any description of mortal grief in consequence.  Better so than have his own conscience denouncing him sneak.  Some boys who behave boldly enough are not troubled by this conscience, and the eyes and the lips of their fellows have to supply the deficiency.  They do it with just as haunting, and even more horrible pertinacity, than the inner voice, and the result, if the probation be not very severe and searching, is the same.  The leader can rely on the faithfulness of his host:  the comrade is sworn to serve.  Master Ripton Thompson was naturally loyal.  The idea of turning off and forsaking his friend never once crossed his mind, though his condition was desperate, and his friend’s behaviour that of a Bedlamite.  He announced several times impatiently that they would be too late for dinner.  His friend did not budge.  Dinner seemed nothing to him.  There he lay plucking grass, and patting the old dog’s nose, as if incapable of conceiving what a thing hunger was.  Ripton took half-a-dozen turns up and down, and at last flung himself down beside the taciturn boy, accepting his fate.